Shit. That was right. If Sam had his druthers, he would have spent all day, every day, in the Mobile, doing what he was best at. Instead, he had to beg funding from corporations. He ground his teeth slightly, and drew the safety razor over his smooth left cheek.
The voice on the third message was unfamiliar. "Dr. Samuel Desta? I got your number from Elise Pellagro. My name is Charlie Gould, and I've been working on a documentary for some time. I've got lots and lots of good footage, and I think that if we collaborated, we could do some really great things for the Onus community. I've been speaking with Elise, and I'm volunteering in the Mobile on the evening of the sixteenth. I can't wait to meet you."
The unfamiliar voice left a number, and Sam saved it with the touch of a button. He hadn't heard anything about a documentary. Either Gould was a student, or full of shit. But it was absolutely a lead worth following. Since speaking at the senate, donations had been pouring in, and support for the Onus Recognition Act was starting to gain momentum. If nothing else, Sam knew the power of publicity.
One last message. Shorter than all the rest.
"G-Good morning! S... Sam!"
He was looking in the mirror, carefully grooming the skin on the right side of his face that still grew facial hair. He was so surprised by Shiloh's voice that he dropped the razor. He stared at the phone for a moment. A female voice was droning, asking him if he wanted to save the message, delete it or-.
Sam saved the message. Shiloh must have called his phone during the night, left a message for morning. He felt a small point of warmth in his stomach. So much had changed. Changed from that first day. It almost felt surreal.
He looked at his bare ruined face in the mirror. "I'm doing the right thing." He said softly, out loud.
His reflection looked back at him, accusing. Even to his own ears, the statement rang false. How could he be doing the right thing?
His reflection shook it's head. Then why was there a lock in the tower? He imagined the words coming out of his reflection's mouth.
"He doesn't sleep there anymore. I wouldn't ever h-hurt him." He told his reflection. This time, it seemed to smirk. There was an insolent glint in his listing right eye.
He covered the right side with a clean silk patch, tying it behind his head. Cosmetic surgery had been an option for the last twenty years. He had considered it more times than he could count.
Even with the clouded eye hidden, his reflection grinned broadly. That is your real face. The smooth part, that's just a mask.
Sam closed his lips over his teeth, relaxing from his taut grimace of a smile. "Shut up."
--
Today was an important day. A suit-and-tie day. Sam left his pale blue shirt, silk tie, and grey suit coat folded over a chair for now. He stood at the stove top in a white strap-style undershirt and his suit pants. He felt flecks of bacon grease pelting his arms and the top of his chest.
Odd. After everything, that he still enjoyed bacon. He breaded some fresh red slices of tomato and dropped them into the grease with a satisfying hiss.
Over the crackle of the tomatoes, he could hear the soft creak of a door. There wasn't a good view of the second-floor bedrooms from the kitchen, so he stayed put, waiting for the soft click-clack of Shiloh's footsteps to draw near.
The entrance to the kitchen was on his blind side. He could hear click-clack-click, then silence. He resisted the urge to turn his head. He had spent most of his life overcorrecting for his weakened (or patched) right eye, but Shy... Shiloh needed a moment to scope out the room. The young Onus had earned his nickname many times over. Sam knew by now to let him initiate contact.
Shiloh rapped the cabinet with his knuckles, and Sam knew it was safe to look. He turned his head. The doctor in him quickly noticed that Shiloh was standing straighter than ever. It was good to see him walking with good posture. Not mincing, like his insides hurt.
"Morning, Shy." Shiloh flicked his face up before looking back at the floor. He had a hard time maintaining eye contact. But the young man smiled a little, flicking the tip of his grey tongue out to taste the air. "Smell good?" A slight nod, and Shiloh patted his stomach. His ward had a very hard time speaking, but he was very good at communicating.
"Help yourself, I'm almost done with the tomatoes. I'll join you in a minute."
Sam was not an imposing man. He stood all of five-foot-six, and he weighed maybe a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. Many Onus stood taller than him, not to mention full humans. But Shiloh was very small, even for an Onus. He flipped the tomatoes and watched Shiloh lean forward on the toes of his casts so he could reach a plate. His doctor's eye saw that Shiloh's hands were trembling more than usual this morning.
"Actually..." Shiloh halted instantaneously, looking at him. A week ago, he would have flinched. Progress? "Let me get that for you."
Sam's plates weren't made of glass. But the last time Shiloh dropped one it had made a loud clattering noise and startled Shiloh into one of his (thankfully rare) panic attacks. It had taken almost an hour for Sam to coax him out of his hiding place, the nearest bathroom. To convince him that he wasn't angry.
Sam put the finished tomatoes on a plate lined with paper towels. He forked two directly onto Shy's plate. He checked his watch, he wasn't expected at Generations for an hour and a half, yet. He piled his own plate high with scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried tomatoes.
Starting recently, with a few notable exceptions (soup, mainly) Shiloh ate almost exclusively with his hands. Distribution of olfactory receptors among Onus was maddeningly random. Sam wrote his thesis on Onus sensory organs before going on to research an immuno-booster for the mothers of Onus with the late Marion Kinicke.
Onus had eyes, they had ears, and noses, and tongues. But they also had patches of hypersensitive skin on their bodies that seemed to pull triple, or even quadruple duty. The patches always had bilateral symmetry, but remained unique from individual to individual. The unique sensory organs were referred to as SSO's (Squamous Sensory Organs), or light-sensitive derma in scientific company. In more common parlance, Sensory patches or Onus spots. Among certain social and political strata, the terms were... earthier. Snatchskin and Freakrash being the most popular.
Sam had already done a few simple tests, asked a few questions. Shiloh was one of the approximate 80% of Onus who could sense light with his SSO's. He was in a rarer sliver of the population that had more olfactory and taste receptors in his SSO's than he did in his tongue.
Sam watched him smile at picking up a slice of tomato, tasting it already. It was worth it. Worth getting up early and going through the trouble to cook. If only just to see Shiloh smile like that. After taking a small bite, the young man wiped his fingers and scrawled a quick note in one of his notebooks. He slid it across the table to Sam, so he could read it.
YUM. Shiloh made the letters blocky and three-dimensional, with little comic-book lines bursting away from them, for emphasis. In the upper right hand corner of the page, he had sketched Pocky, but crossed it out so Sam would know that YUM was the point of the exchange. It was a shame. The sketch was quite good.
"I wanted to give you another checkup this afternoon." Sam spoke between bites of egg. "It's been a few weeks since your surgery, and I just want to see how everything is going."
Shiloh glanced up at him, and Sam thought the young man's pale skin looked a little pink. Especially around the ears and high up on his neck. "You look a lot healthier, Shy. You've forgotten to take your pain pills a few times, walking easier. I could even get you into some lighter casts." Shiloh nodded hard enough that his clean white hair flopped into his eyes. He smiled with his teeth. It was a good thing to see. Shiloh's smiles had once been a very rare thing.
Now for the hard part. "I... ah. I also managed to pick up some things for you. You told me about your family doctor. I contacted him. He keeps good records, which is unusual for doctors who provide care for Onus. You were fairly up to date on your vaccines, but there are a few that you need to catch up on."
The look that came over Shiloh's face was enough to make him pause. Shiloh fiddled with the pen for a few long seconds. He started to write, and scribbled out his starts three times. Finally, he just scrawled and circled a large question mark.
"HPV, for one. You also haven't gotten the Tdap. That's tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. It also couldn't hurt for you to get a flu shot." He could hear his voice settling into professional rhythms. It was easier to speak as a doctor than as... than as whatever they were to each other. Sam knew he still had to try.
"I don't want you to do anything you hate, but—"
Shiloh was writing. Sam trailed off. Shiloh flipped the notebook towards him. He had excellent handwriting, but the lines were uneven and a bit smudged. Some days it was better, but today his hands were shaking too badly.
